We were sad to leave the Acadia
area, but ready to visit the White Mountains in New Hampshire. The drive was easy and uneventful –
yeah! When we arrived at the White
Birches Campground I had to jump out of the truck on the highway to move a
traffic cone so that we could make the turn into the entrance. There was a big dip and the bike rack has a
little asphalt souvenir, but no permanent damage. The park had an interesting layout in that
the big rig area was terraced down a hill with nice big pull-thru sites with
great views of the mountains. It was 100
degrees again and we set up in a hurry in order to get inside with the
a/c. There was also another side to the
campground with heavily wooded tent sites and a great place to walk the
dogs.
We used our first day for
housekeeping and grocery shopping. The
closest area for shopping was Gorham, NH and the only store was a Wal-Mart, but
it was a pretty nice one. We filled up
on supplies and planned our next couple of days of sight-seeing. We headed out the next morning to take the
100 mile loop drive through the central White Mountains. This area is made up of the White Mountain
National Forest, Franconia Notch State Park, Crawford Notch State Park, Mt
Washington State Park and Echo Lake State Park.
The interesting thing is the state parks charge a fee to see some of
their more popular sights. For example
it cost $36 to drive your own car to the top of Mt Washington! The driving loop took us through all of the
state parks and some cute little towns.
It is a very green and lush area, but honestly kind of boring. I guess we are really getting spoiled with
the beautiful places we have been. We stopped at a spot where we could see the Old Man in the Mountain. I could see it no problem, but Peg just couldn't. We finally found a sign that tells us the Old Man's face fell off the mountain years ago. I guess my imagination is better than I thought. There
were lots of trailheads along the route, but all of the parking areas were
packed with cars. We did find one
path that was labeled dog walk area and it turned out to be a nice quiet hike
that we all enjoyed. This time the
visitor center was of no value. The
hiking information was lacking so I decided that I would spend some time
researching the area on the inter-webs. We ended our drive by going on a moose hunt. This area is supposed to have moose everywhere and we picked up a map at the office of the places where they hang out. We drove and drove and drove. We are absolutely convinced there are no bears or moose left anywhere in the country.
 |
| Beautiful view from our living room |
Check out those dog goggles
The Old Man who isn't there anymore
I found a hike for the next day
called Falling Waters Trail located in Franconia Notch State Park which sounded
nice. It was a further drive than I
realized, but boy was it worth it. It
was labeled as three mile round trip of moderate difficulty with three
different waterfalls along the trail.
When we arrived at the trailhead the parking lot was again packed, but
not full and we decided to face our crowd fears and press on. We leashed up the poochers, turned their new
Citronella anti-barking collars on and headed in. Not too far in we ran into a couple coming
out with their Golden off-leash and everyone else we ran into was super dog
friendly so we unleashed and continued on.
Calcite has become quite the trail guide and can follow the blue trail
markers better than either of us. And we
can’t believe Zoe is 91 years old putting us to shame as she is always in the lead. It was about 1.5 miles to the top where the
largest waterfall was located and of course it was all up-hill. This was a truly gorgeous hike. It followed the large creek all of the way
up. We relaxed at the top and enjoyed
the beautiful waterfall before heading back down. It was a great day.
When we returned home for our last
evening I performed my ritualistic duty of programming our next stop into Nadine
(our GPS). I was completely shocked to
find that she said it was going to take us 6 ½ hrs. to make the drive to Cold
Brook, NY! That was not what I expected
at all.
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